AAP government to bear expenses of MLAs opening offices

New Delhi: The AAP government in Delhi will bear the cost of opening and maintaining offices by legislators who have been asked to identify the land in their respective constituencies in the national capital.

In a letter to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lawmaker Vijender Gupta, assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel said the government of the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi has conveyed it was in agreement to the concept of establishing offices of assembly constituencies in each seat.

The letter was written on June 25.

Interestingly, about a dozen of AAP legislators have demanded hike in their salaries, due to official expenses in their constituencies.

Of the 70 Delhi legislators, 67 are from the Aam Aadmi Party and the remaining three belong to the BJP.

The letter said that “the office should be approximately about 700-1,000 square feet in size and located at a convenient location which is easily accessible to the public”.

“Office infrastructure like staff, furniture equipment like computer, fax etc. will be provided by the Delhi assembly Secretariat,” it added.

Chicago: The Aam Aadmi Party Convener and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has launched a door to door campaign seeking donations for the AAP. According to former overseas co-coordinator of Aam Aadmi Party, Dr. Munish Raizada, this is nothing more than a misleading campaign!

Raizada says that Kejriwal has no moral right to seek donations from common man as he has dismantled financial transparency in AAP by removing donors list from its website. Displaying donors’ list showing real time donations and making the income and expenditure accounts available online were the basis and the promise of the AAP, emphasised Raizada.

Now, after hiding donors’ list and its balance sheets from the public, the AAP cannot claim to be practising alternative politics.

Lack of financial transparency in the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP prompted a group of NRIs, who once worked to mobilise funds and support for the party, to turn against it. (File photo)

It may be noted that AAP removed the list of donors from its website in June 2016. Moreover, since then AAP has been surrounded with controversies related to donations. AAP had also received Rs 30.67 crore Income Tax notice, last year in November, implying that all is not well with AAP’s accounts, says Raizada.

He further questions Kejriwal, that if AAP has nothing to hide about its accounts and if AAP is honest with its account keeping then why is Kejriwal hiding the donations?

Even the donation policy that was earlier the pride of every AAP volunteer has been done away with. The donation policy on AAP website used to state: “Every single rupee donated to the party will be published on the website immediately along with the details of the donor. Every expense done by the party will also be published on the website.”

But rather than putting the donors’ list in public domain, the party’s corrupt leadership started blaming BJP and I.T. Department for harassing its donors.

Opaque political funding is the fountain head of corruption. Further, Raizada says that if the party cannot be transparent in its political funding, then talking about fighting corruption and graft is a mere rhetoric. He said that the appeals by Chanda Bandh Satyagraha have fallen on deaf ears as far as the party’s

leadership is concerned.

Chanda Bandh Satyagraha makes an appeal that AAP should immediately restore donors’ list on its website and then only seek new donations. Chanda Bandh Satyagraha was started by AAP’s volunteers in 2016, with an appeal to the public not to donate to AAP unless it makes its donation lists open and transparent.